Heavensward
by Chaotic Century
Summary: There are no endings without new beginnings. Conclusion to the Earthling trilogy; Battle Story/Chaotic Century timeline.


**Author's Note:** This is the final story in the "Earthling" trilogy. Anyone familiar with where "Remain in the Light of the Stars" left off and the Chaotic Century anime begins knows there is no avoiding the tragic events bridging that gap. However, when one star dims, another is born: it is precisely because sorrow exists in the world that we are also able to experience joy.

Thank you so much for lending me your time and attention throughout this writing project. There are several side projects to the trilogy in the works or already published. My author profile has further information regarding the order in which I suggest they be read.

* * *

 **ZAC 2082**

Silence lay heavily over a humble adobe cottage. The sun had long since given up its weak struggle against the dense iron clouds that pressed low over the landscape, blotting out what they could. Winter held the village in the lonely desert oasis in its cool hands. There was no sound to be heard in the small gray room but the eternal moaning of the wind and his own exhalations. Breath brought with it pain. No, not only breath: mere existence brought with it pain now.

This small home was so different from the Helic military barracks to which he was accustomed. The base was forever a flurry of activity: soldiers coming and going, offenses being planned, defenses being fortified, Zoids being repaired and tested and upgraded for skirmishes to come. He was quite used to the utter lack of both privacy and sacrosanct personal time. The military had housed, fed, and trained him when he had had nothing and no one, and he therefore had not begrudged the total commitment it in turn required from him, even when it kept him away from his family for long periods.

Here, though, there were no battles, except those within his mind. No plans, no preparations, no activity, nothing to distract him from the swelling black hole in his chest. As it grew larger and larger, his world, in turn, became smaller and smaller. He saw, heard, sensed, knew nothing but the oppression of this quiet, his own breathing, the restless wind, and a little girl with dark eyes watching him from across the room.

She rarely spoke even under normal circumstances, and certainly said nothing now. Just watched, taking in his hunched form and the confines of the room and the faded world passing them by outside with dark brown eyes so familiar he almost couldn't bear to look into them. They seemed out of place in her young face; they belonged to someone else.

At this thought the blackness in his chest yawned its arms open, inviting him into oblivion, into madness. Such sweet entreaties were increasingly difficult to resist. Shadows crept around the edges of his vision, closing in, staining everything, shrinking him into a tunnel. He closed his eyes, let the darkness in. He was lost. All was lost.

Just then, there was a small warm hand touching his, and a small warm body climbing into his lap, and then a single word, soft and crystal clear, shining through the void like sunlight burning away the fog.

"Daddy?"

-.-.-.-

Memory did not so much linger ghostlike in his mind as permanently dwell there. Stronger even than the sensory details of her hair running through his fingers or the particular sparkle of her laughter were the feelings that endured, even many years later. The shock of discovery one day when he'd encountered a lifeless metal behemoth out in the desert, followed by curiosity and worry when he found a pale little waif of a girl nearby, lying next to a crooked grave and weeping. The butterflies in his stomach when she was close to him, piloting his Zoid with increasingly skilled hands. The radiant blossoming in his chest when she had asked him one night with starlit eyes, "Do you like me too, Dan?"

Those eyes.

The way they had looked at him when he had been forced to leave her and Zeke behind: luminous with understanding, darkened with grief.

And then their blaze of indescribable light and love two endless years later when she first beheld him in the pale dusk.

But two endless days ago, those soulful brown eyes had gazed into his own for a long moment before closing forever, their starlight extinguished.

-.-.-.-

Those same eyes were looking up at him now: the same, but different. Vigilant and unsure, but faithful and trusting. She was still holding his large hand in her two little ones.

"Daddy, where did Mommy go?"

He held her close and rested his chin on the top of her head. "I don't know, Maria." His voice was hoarse from lack of use. In two endless days, he had not been able to cry, no matter how the blackness pressed against his chest or the pain swelled in his throat.

Feeling his daughter's feathery weight in his lap, he thought about her question. How could he possibly explain to someone so young? But then, looking into those familiar eyes, marveling at how they managed to bravely shine even when there was no light left in the world, he suddenly knew exactly where his wife had gone.

Willow was going back to the place from whence she'd come.

-.-.-.-

Dan Flyheight was no stranger to grief; it had knocked at his door frequently over the years. His sister and parents had perished in the cataclysm many years prior. And then, being in the military, he had lost many comrades to violence, to war. As a soldier, he well understood and believed in the nobility of sacrifice, and would gladly lay down his life at any time if it would serve the greater good, as some of his friends had already done. However, the losses he'd endured that hurt the most were those that felt meaningless, with no larger purpose served: an accident, a sudden illness.

A meteorite.

Obstetrical hemorrhage.

In all of these instances, as the apocalypse rained down from a blazing sky or the strength drained inexorably from his wife, he had been forced to stand by, frightened and helpless, as those who meant most to him slipped away into the long darkness, never to return.

Willow had not even lived long enough to see her newborn son's face.

-.-.-.-

There was a soft knock, piercing the vacuum of sound the little cottage had become. Dan's head shot up. No, no, no. Fate could not possibly be this cruel.

The blackness inside him stirred, listening, patiently anticipating.

His heart was pounding in his ears. With trembling hands he softly set his daughter down, crossed the room, and opened the door.

Mrs. Flanagan stood at the threshold, red in the face and a bit winded. "The priest sent me to get you right away," she said breathlessly.

The black monster roared, stretching into a bottomless chasm, preparing to swallow him whole. "Is - is he - ?!" The remainder of the question lodged in his throat. He couldn't breathe.

She touched his arm comfortingly. "Yes, dear. He's fine. He's fine." She swallowed hard, suddenly choking back tears. "Father Leon says...he's ready to come home now."

Dan stood unblinking, about to collapse with relief. The monster fled and the blackness faded, leaving behind naked sadness alone.

"Come now," Mrs. Flanagan said gently. Her gaze sought out shy Maria, half-hidden in the shadows of the room beyond. "You too, Maria. Come, love. Would you like to meet your new brother?"

Maria nodded mutely and appeared in the doorway beside her father, taking his hand. Mrs. Flanagan led both her wordless charges down the dirt path into town.

-.-.-.-

A cool wind whistled softly through the treetops and blew over two figures, one big and one little, walking along through the dreamy darkness. Above them, a boundless spread of stars shimmered in the vast green dome of the night sky. Zi's pair of sepia moons rose in the distance, tinting the landscape with their pale light. Ahead, a darkened cottage and a white Command Wolf lying sphinx-like beside it waited.

Dan held Maria's hand in his own; hers was so small that it completely vanished behind his fingers. In his other arm, he held a small bundle swaddled in blankets.

The Command Wolf noted their approach and vocalized softly in greeting.

Maria solemnly approached her father's Zoid. "Would you like to meet my new baby brother, Zeke?"

In response, Zeke stretched his nose carefully toward the little bundle. Dan crouched down and tenderly shifted aside some of the blankets to reveal a small, sleeping face with dark hair and a red stripe on the left cheek. Maria leaned in close to see.

"Zeke, say hello to Van," Dan whispered, never taking his eyes off of his son. Zeke gravely observed the impossibly tiny creature in his pilot's arms, and emitted a gentle, friendly growl of salutation.

At this sound, Van awoke and yawned vigorously, then looked around. For a long moment, he took in the moonlight glinting off of Zeke's orange canopy and the captivated faces of his sister and father gazing adoringly down at him. Then he looked beyond all three. The light of the stars reflected in his liquid dark eyes, so like his mother's, as he gazed in silent rapture at the unfathomable heavens above.

Dan looked up as well, just in time to see a shooting star streak across the sky, its ephemeral beauty there and then gone again in an instant. Van, perhaps, saw something too, for he suddenly broke into a wide smile and reached upward with a tiny hand.

"What do you see up there, Van?" Maria asked him.

Dan knew. Of course he knew.

Willow had returned to the distant stars. Back home.

He finally wept.


End file.
